


stand where i stand

by moodmaker



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Bets & Wagers, Canon Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28035513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moodmaker/pseuds/moodmaker
Summary: They agree to call it the Speaking Politely Challenge—“Boooring,” according to Donghyuck, but Jeno, Renjun, and Jaemin combined forces last-minute to shoot him down, like a series of strategically-timed political endorsements.The rules go like this:
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Lee Jeno
Comments: 20
Kudos: 168





	stand where i stand

**Author's Note:**

> started writing this as a fun distraction from my other wips and only just got around to finishing it now. based off of [this video,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z9HRhvfkjo&t=0s&ab_channel=%EC%B1%84%EB%84%90NCTDAILY) because how could i not?
> 
> takes place during ridin’ promos, title from this love isn’t crazy - carly rae jepsen

Over the course of their four-year stint as NCT Dream they’ve developed an extensive, time-honored repertoire of ways to kill time between comeback stages. The list (kept on Jeno’s phone, which he backs up to their shared iCloud with each new addition) dates all the way back to their Chewing Gum days, during which Chenle’s clumsy fumbling with the hoverboard had been their primary source of entertainment amid makeup touch-ups and in-ear adjustments.

“Spin around,” Jaemin had ordered.

“Do a handstand,” Jeno suggested instead, patting his hair down to no avail.

“No, a flip!” Jisung chimed in.

“Why not all three?” proposed Donghyuck, ever the enabler.

Mark sighed and made tired eye contact with Renjun. “This is such a bad idea.”

Never one to back down from a challenge, Chenle had thrown his baseball cap aside, smirked, and promptly smashed his knee into the wall of their dressing room so hard that the company had to shell out 10,0000 won to KBS in damages.

“I’m okay guys,” Chenle had said, waving aside the horde of staff that came rushing over. “My knees are covered in bruises anyway. What’s one more?”

Needless to say, they’ve toned it down since then. 

Well—kind of.

“Alright,” Donghyuck clasps his hands together, ignoring the dirty look Renjun shoots him as he reluctantly takes his headphones out to listen to whatever BS Donghyuck's inevitably about to spew. “New game.”

“What,” Jaemin snorts, “do you not remember what happened the last time you said that?”

Donghyuck shudders. He still can’t listen to an ITZY song the same way again even now, eight months later.

He shakes his head in earnest. “It’ll be different this time.” He reaches out to hook a pinky around Jaemin’s wrist, because Jaemin’s love language is basic-as-fuck and Donghyuck's got him down to an art. “Promise.”

Jaemin doesn’t look convinced but indulges him anyway. “Okay, shoot.”

Now that he’s actually got their attention, Donghyuck pauses, unsure. He’s been trying to voice this out for weeks but never found a good time, since they were usually paired off for interviews or clumped backstage as an entire unit, and this kind of thing is meant for the four of them only. For a moment he considers dropping it altogether.

Then he remembers that Jisung swapped his shampoo out for dish soap that morning and stops considering.

“Haven’t you guys noticed that ever since Chenle became an adult, he and Jisung have been, like, so much brattier?” Jeno’s eyes widen as he looks pointedly at the door, but Donghyuck’s not worried. Jisung’s busy getting his mic examined by the sound techs and Chenle’s in the bathroom right now. They have nothing to fear.

“Chenle, I kind of get,” Donghyuck says contemplatively, thinking back to the time Chenle had been goaded by Jaemin into vaulting himself over Mark’s still-sleeping form, only to trip midair and stab his foot into Mark’s esophagus (Mark started sleeping in the 127 dorms after that). “But Jisung’s just rude. We practically raised him.”

“I,” Jaemin corrects. “I raised him.”

Donghyuck gives Jaemin a tired stare but doesn’t go any further than that. It’s no use—Jaemin’s always had the worst baby fever out of them all anyway. The least they can do is let him smother Jisung to cope.

“They’ve always been that way.” Jeno shrugs, reaching over to uncap a water bottle and chug it down, Jaemin and Renjun nodding after him in silent agreement.

Donghyuck watches a bead of water slip down the column of Jeno's throat and gulps reflexively. He resists the urge to whine. “Yeah, but isn’t it about time that we do something about it?”

“Like what?” Renjun laughs, a little disbelievingly. “It’s not like they’ll listen to anything we say.”

“We’re 00z! We have an inseparable bond like none other,” Donghyuck insists. “I, for one, will not stand idly by as my dignity is trampled upon.”

“What dignity,” Jaemin mutters under his breath.

“So,” Donghyuck presses on, over the sound of Renjun and Jeno's snickers. “I have an idea.”

They agree to call it the Speaking Politely Challenge—“Boooring,” according to Donghyuck, but Jeno, Renjun, and Jaemin combined forces last-minute to shoot him down, like a series of strategically-timed political endorsements.

The rules go like this:

1) One thousand won for any banmal (yes Jisung, yaja time counts.)  
2) Five thousand won for speaking when you're upset at someone.  
3) Ten thousand won for using any kind of slang.  
4) Twenty thousand won for impolite contact (excessive skinship reluctantly allowed, or else the company—and Jaemin—would throw a fit.)  
5) And lastly, fifty thousand won for lying to each other.

“Why is lying the harshest punishment?” Jisung wonders, after Jeno unveiled the list of rules they’d written up onto the whiteboard. They’re huddled around the dining room in their pajamas because all the packages Jaemin ordered during his online shopping spree a couple of nights ago have finally arrived and now sit unopened in the living room, effectively relocating their group meeting to the dining room and Chenle and Jisung (who took a shine to sleeping on the floor together during BOOM promotions) back into their respective rooms.

Well, not totally. Now they take turns crashing on Jaemin's bunk in the kind of blatant, territorial revenge you'd expect from a really poorly-trained puppy, or from two overgrown preschoolers who've spent all their lives trapped in the time-out corner. 

Oh wait, that's them.

“Because, Jisung-ssi,” Jaemin begins, tone slipping into kindergarten teacher territory. “We're teaching you to be a productive member of society, and productive members of society don't _lie_.”

Jisung gives him a blank look in return.

“Just go with it,” Chenle assures him.

Donghyuck takes stock of their reactions. Disappointingly, they both look rather unbothered by this newest development. Chenle’s leaning forward excitedly in his seat, only an inch or two away from falling off of the stool completely, and Jisung gives a slight shrug in response but doesn’t react otherwise.

“The stakes are really high,” Donghyuck rushes to say, determined to wrangle some form of actual acknowledgement from the two of them.

Renjun quirks an eyebrow at him. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” Donghyuck nods, confidence growing the more he thinks about it. “All of the money's going toward our BBQ dinner at the end of the week, and the loser has to do whatever the winner wants,” he finishes in triumph, struggling to keep the corners of his mouth tamped down.

“So it’s an individual competition?”

Chenle cackles and jabs a finger into Jisung's chest. “You are _so_ going down.”

“Not if you go down first,” Jisung shoots back, which is just… lame. Donghyuck takes back the thing he said about raising him.

“This wasn't part of the plan,” Jeno hisses into his ear, arms crossed in protest, but it doesn't really matter. Chenle's now enraged enough by Jisung's taunt that they're fighting again on their way to Jaemin's room, bickering so loudly that their manager sticks his head into the doorway and threatens to turn off the heat for the night if they won't shut up. (“Why would you punish all of us?" Renjun shouts after him, but their manager's already gone. Renjun shakes his head forlornly. "We live in a society," he quotes.)

Jaemin slinks over to them next. “Forget the plan,” he declares gleefully, hands outstretched for emphasis. “This is so much better.”

“This is a one-stop ride to hell,” Renjun grumbles as he watches them go. “You know how competitive Chenle gets.”

“What, like you're not the same?”

Renjun's eyes narrow. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“No-thing,” Jaemin singsongs, clearly meaning something. “Just that _you_ already owe four thousand won in the,” he makes a show of checking the ridiculously oversized Rolex that he insists on wearing at all times, “seven minutes that have passed since this started.”

“Bullshit,” Renjun bluffs, then sighs. “I'm at nine thousand now, aren't I.”

Jeno claps a hand down on his shoulder. “Glad to know you're self-aware.”

By the end of the next day, they’ve more or less settled into an order.

“You guys are like a totem pole,” Mark had said over Donghyuck’s shoulder after 127 finished practice for the day, frowning down at the carefully curated spreadsheet pulled up on Donghyuck’s phone. “Of _sin._ ”

Mark had actually said more than that—probably given a lecture about the moral ambiguity of subjecting your members to unnecessary competition, the dangers of the subsequent mental warfare it could cause, and how much chaos and ruin they must have fallen into now that he was no longer there to guide them toward the light—but Donghyuck had tuned him out in favor of updating the standings. Jaemin just texted that Renjun had blown up at them by the sixth “Renjeon-ssi” and was thus back at the bottom of the list.

(“You get my name wrong one more time and I’ll tell Dispatch that you mouthed off to Taeyeon,” hissed Renjun.

“At least I’m not already in debt at nineteen,” smirked Jaemin.

“Dude!” Jeno half-whispered, half-yelled, tugging on Jaemin’s arm. “It’s _Taeyeon!_ ”

“So?”

Jisung clutched his stomach, looking vaguely green. “I’m going to go lie down and pretend you didn’t just say that.”)

As expected, Jeno reigns above them all with a whopping zero won owed, followed closely by Chenle (somehow gets away with it every single time), Jaemin (betrayed by his own inability to shut up), Donghyuck (can’t stop himself from indulging in a friendly peck every now and then), Jisung (too used to dropping honorifics with them all), and finally Renjun (an Aries through and through).

“There's no way Chenle's in second,” insists Renjun, having FaceTimed Donghyuck the minute he'd sent a screenshot of the first day's rankings into their group chat (“I wish you monitored your comeback stages with this level of dedication,” their manager sighs wistfully.) “Jisung said—”

“I know what Jisung said,” Donghyuck waves a hand dismissively. “But there were no witnesses, right? I don't know about you but I am honor-bound by the law to presume innocence—”

“You’re just playing favorites,” Jisung’s voice rings out from his phone, and Donghyuck squints until he realizes that the blob in the upper left-hand corner of his screen is Jisung in a hoodie. “This is rigged,” he continues, reaching over Renjun to look at Donghyuck more closely. “I’ll remember this when I eventually go solo and the emcees start asking me about what the other members are up to. I’ll tell them that you’re having an affair with Jeno-hyung,” he finishes gleefully, stars in his eyes.

Donghyuck’s stomach does a belly flop at the thought. “And I’ll charge you five thousand won in the meantime,” he says, instead of thinking about what having an affair with Jeno might entail. Maybe they’ll get matching couple rings, or sneak around Hongdae in masks, or make out in the janitor’s closet on the third floor like Donghyuck’s always dreamed of doing ever since Yerim first clued him in on trainee hookup culture.

“What for?” asks Jisung, and Donghyuck suddenly remembers that he’s still on FaceTime. With the camera on. And an audience of two. Renjun shoots him a knowing look, which he ignores in favor of figuring out what Jisung’s whining about.

“Uh, speaking while upset.”

Jisung frowns. “Damn it.”

“Another five thousand,” Donghyuck tsks, shaking his head. “Get it together, Jisung.”

He’d been kind of hoping Renjun would let it slide. Naive, perhaps, but Renjun does have his moments. Like when he’d graciously ignored Donghyuck’s botched ment during their post-awards interview in favor of ripping into Jaemin for tripping on camera.

When Donghyuck gets back to the dorm though, Renjun’s already waiting for him.

“Missed me that much?”

Renjun snorts in response. “Of course not.”

“Wow. And here I thought you actually cared. Aren’t you supposed to be my—”

“You still like Jeno?”

Donghyuck shoots him a look, cutting and sharp, but there’s no point in pretending. He falls in love the same way that actors kiss in K-dramas—that is to say, with no artistry at all. It’d taken Renjun only three days into his training to tap Donghyuck on the shoulder after everyone else had left the practice room and say, in the detached sort of way any gossip about strangers was, “Can you stop eye-fucking blondie? It’s distracting.”

(Unfortunately, Donghyuck did not stop. Fortunately, Renjun learned to put up with it.)

He settles for an agitated huff. “What’s it to you?”

“Nothing,” Renjun shrugs, checking his nails. “But you do realize that he’s probably going to win this thing, right?”

“…Yeah?”

“He told me that he’d be nice and just ask the person to come visit his cats with him.”

Donghyuck sucks in a breath. Man, now he almost feels bad about his plan to get out of doing chores for the next five years.

“Okay?”

Renjun huffs. “Do I really have to spell this out for you? I’m saying you should lose on purpose so that you get to go.”

“That’s…” Donghyuck thinks about it. Jeno’s cats are pretty cute. “Actually not a bad idea.”

“Thanks,” Renjun deadpans. “I have those, sometimes.” 

“But I can’t. I’m barely functioning around him as it is. Going to his house to see his cats with him? I’d, like, dissolve into the floor.”

“I think you’d make a very good floor,” says Chenle, appearing out of nowhere. Donghyuck jumps about three feet into the air in response. It’s moments like these that make him reconsider how much Chenle’s parents would miss him if he were gone—clearly, the fucker knows how to be quiet when he wants to be.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Renjun slaps a hand over Chenle’s mouth. “He’s saying that you’re stronger than you think.”

“Oh.” Donghyuck blinks. “Thanks.”

Chenle crinkles his eyes at him in response.

“Wait.” Donghyuck squints, looking at Renjun, then Chenle, and then back at Renjun. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“I’m always nice to you,” Renjun says, not meeting his eyes.

“Liar!” Chenle wrenches free of Renjun’s hand and crows delightedly. “You lied! You owe fifty thousand more now!”

“Oh my god,” Donghyuck makes a sound at the back of his throat. “You told me to lose on purpose. You tried to trick me.”

Renjun looks only mildly annoyed at being found out. “I wasn’t going to win anyway.”

“Cheater,” Donghyuck hisses.

“Hey,” Chenle frowns. “He meant well.”

“Whose side are you on?”

Chenle looks genuinely confused for a moment. “I don’t know.”

“At least talk to Jeno.” Renjun drags a hand down his face. “Please.”

 _Why would I need to do that?_ Donghyuck’s about to retort, but the look Renjun sends him is enough to make his mouth snap shut with a clack. “Fine,” he mutters instead.

Okay, so everyone knows he’s got a crush, but in his defense Jeno is pretty high on everyone’s “if I had to pick a guy” list.

(“No he’s not,” Jisung had said in abject horror, scooching away from Donghyuck when he’d first brought it up during recording. “Gross.”

Donghyuck looked through the glass at Jeno rapping in his Thrasher hoodie and sighed.

“Who’s on yours then?” asked Chenle around the straw that he was sucking on.

Jisung went bright red. “None of your business.”)

It’s like: when Donghyuck first joined SM he’d almost immediately gotten shuffled into the advanced classes and, resultantly, became closest to those older than him. When Jeno and Jaemin entered on the same day, he suddenly had to contend with the fact that he was no longer the only 2000s kid on SM’s training roster.

And they’d obviously been casted. Donghyuck had thought of his own turn in line on that Saturday, all those months ago, and couldn’t help the frown that formed in response. He promised himself that he’d stick to Mark-hyung and the others, but he barely lasted a day. Jeno caught him on their way back to the dorms by smuggling a contraband Melona into his hands and the ensuing eye smile told Donghuck that he was a goner.

It’s been seven years since, and, well—Donghyuck’s still so, so gone.

_I am a normal idol who has been thinking about totally normal idol things, like when’s the next time I can eat something with more than a hundred calories in it and how to convince my groupmate to swap shower times with me so that I don’t have to listen to my other groupmate jack off through the wall before I start seriously considering going over and helping him out in the name of group bonding,_

is what Donghyuck would say if someone asked him how he was doing, usually.

Unfortunately these days it’s more like:

_I am going to go absolutely batshit insane if Lee Jeno doesn’t put on a shirt right fucking now, so help me God-that-I-don’t-believe-in. Is this what it feels like to be Doyoung-hyung?_

“Hi,” Jeno mumbles as he stumbles into the kitchen, rubbing sluggishly at one eye.

“Hi,” Donghyuck squeaks back.

Jeno went to sleep wearing only his boxers again. Donghyuck is going to duct tape seven layers onto him tonight.

“Renjun told me what you were going to do if you won,” Donghyuck blurts, for lack of anything else to say.

Jeno raises an eyebrow at him. “Yeah? What do you think?”

 _That you’re really hot,_ his mind supplies. 

He clears his throat. “It’s nicer than what I’m planning.”

“Which is?”

He swallows, hard. Jeno’s eyes have darkened the slightest bit after his Lasik surgery and part of Donghyuck’s brain is struggling to reconcile the difference. (The other part is wondering when the hell he’d become so attuned to the shade of Jeno’s _eye color,_ what the fuck.)

“Something,” he stutters.

“Well,” Jeno says, grabbing his coffee and starting to move away. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“You think I can win?”

Jeno shrugs. “Who knows?”

Donghyuck knows.

“Wow,” Jaemin whistles. “I never thought you’d drop this low.”

“Shut up,” Donghyuck mutters, miserable.

The final rankings are neatly typed up onto his phone. He has to screenshot and send them to the group chat in the next forty minutes, when the clock strikes midnight and he subsequently becomes the sole, loyal subject of Jeno’s will.

Yes, Donghyuck came in dead last. No, he has no idea how it happened.

“It’s very full-circle if you think about it,” Jaemin points out, peeking over Donghyuck’s shoulder. “You’re the one who started it.”

“Thanks,” he drawls. “That makes me feel so much better.”

“Jeno just wants you to come see his cats with him,” Jaemin says, rolling his eyes. “It could’ve been so much worse.”

“How?”

“Well, I could’ve won.”

Donghyuck shudders. “Good point.”

And it’s true, that Jaemin winning would’ve been far worse. Anyone else winning would’ve been worse, really: Renjun would banish him from the dorms, Jaemin would insist that his flirting be returned, Jisung would demand free meals, and Chenle—Donghyuck doesn’t even want to think about what Chenle might ask for.

But it’s still not any easier to swallow down his nerves as he stands outside Jeno’s door, working up the courage to barge in like he usually does.

Except he doesn’t have to, because—

“Donghyuck?”

He spins around to find Jeno standing behind him, hair dripping from the shower and glasses askew. He shuts his eyes. Opens them. This is really happening.

He takes a deep breath. “You won.”

“Won what?”

“The—the bet,” Donghyuck sputters, “the whole challenge thing we created? The one with the rules and the money and the—” _Do whatever the winner wants,_ his mind blares at him. He snaps his mouth shut. Jeno can figure out the rest. 

Jeno tilts his head to the side, processing. “Oh.”

“That’s it?” He didn’t spend two hours in the car freaking out for _this._

“Well, it was kind of a given, wasn’t it?” The corner of Jeno’s mouth twitches slightly. Not that Donghyuck’s looking or anything. It just did.

“Who lost, then?”

Donghyuck twists his ring around his knuckle. He’s never done that before. Why hasn’t he done that before, it feels so good—

“You?” Jeno ventures.

Donghyuck deflates. “Yeah,” he admits.

Jeno doesn’t say anything in response, choosing instead to stare at Donghyuck intently. It makes the slightest tremor go through his body—he feels like he’s trapped in one of those airport scanners, knowing that the worst thing he has on him is his belt and yet still feeling like he’ll get caught with something else anyway.

He nudges Jeno’s foot with his own. “I guess I’m coming along with you on our next rest day?”

Jeno tears his gaze away from—well, Donghyuck doesn’t mean to be presumptuous, but he’s pretty sure that Jeno was just staring at his neck—whatever he’d been looking at before to blink at him. “Why would you?”

“Um. Aren’t I going to visit your cats? Since I lost and all?”

“No?”

“But you said—”

“I was never going to make you come visit my cats.”

“What?”

“I was going to ask for a date.”

Donghyuck startles so hard that he slams back against the wall. After issuing the standard apologies for interrupting their beauty sleep (Renjun), movie (Chenle and Jisung), and Photoshop editing session (Jaemin), he massages the back of his head and says, “You, um. You were going to go out with whoever lost?”

“No,” Jeno corrects. “I was going to go out with you.”

Donghyuck doesn’t hit the wall this time, but it’s pretty damn close. “How’d you know I was going to lose?”

“You’re you. I know you.”

Donghyuck blinks, trying to decide whether he should feel offended by that statement. “But you told Renjun that it was the cats!”

“Well yeah,” Jeno admits, “I was—”

“Lying,” Donghyuck says, in amazement. “You lied.”

Jeno shrugs, ears turning a pretty pink. “I wasn’t about to tell him that I wanted to ask you out, or anything.”

“You like me?”

Jeno busies himself by fiddling with his hair. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Donghyuck feels himself start to grin, a quiet, proud thing, before his brain catches up to his heart. “Wait. How many times did you lie?”

Jeno shuffles back and forth, reluctant. “Some?”

“How many times exactly?”

“Eleven?”

“Jeno,” Donghyuck breathes out, slack jawed. 

“Everyone just kept asking me about it,” Jeno mutters, hands in his pockets.

“Wow,” Donghyuck says, leaning back against the wall. “ _Wow._ ”

Jeno frowns, looking vaguely apologetic.

“Wait, oh my god,” Donghyuck pulls out his phone and does the math in his head. “That all counts as part of the thing, right? That you lied?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Now it’s Jeno’s turn to slump into the wall.

“Sorry babe,” Donghyuck says, like he’s always dreamed of. The resulting smile from Jeno is almost enough to make up for what he’s about to say next. “That brings you all the way down to last.”

Jeno’s eyes widen. “So you won’t go out with me?”

“No, silly, of course I will.” Donghyuck reaches out to link their hands. “You don’t need a bet for that.”

Jeno grins at him. It’s so blinding that Donghyuck has to look away.

“I have to redo this,” he says, frowning down at the ranking on his phone. “Because now the winner is—”

“Listen up,” Chenle trills, banging his chopstick against his wine glass like he’s playing the triangle. Seeing that no one’s paying him any mind, he doubles his efforts, switching his wine glass out for Jaemin’s head. “In an absolutely unsurprising turn of events, I’ve won.”

Everyone claps except Jaemin.

“Now,” Chenle says, procuring a notebook from thin air, “here’s what I want from you, Jeno. Free bulgogi treats whenever I ask for it—”

Renjun leans over. “I told you,” he hisses, “I told you this was a bad idea, and did you listen? No.”

As if sensing his distress, Jeno reaches out underneath the table to give Donghyuck’s hand a squeeze.

“Your plan totally backfired,” Renjun huffs.

Donghyuck squeezes back. “No,” he says, smiling. “I don’t think it did.”

**Author's Note:**

> please let me know what you thought and/or come find me here! ⟶ [twitter](https://twitter.com/mythsick) / [cc](https://curiouscat.me/dedication)


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